The Shack in the Woods
Have you ever lived somewhere for so long and discovered something you had not noticed after years of living there... Well let me get off to a better start. I was 15 at the time. I grew up in a small town, a very rural area with a lot of woods and not many people. Well, I had been living in the same house for 15 years and I had never noticed anything out of the ordinary, well, not until that day. I had just been sitting around with my cousin, just another boring summer day. Well, we decided to just go back and walk through the woods, just exploring. I mean, I have been in those woods many times before but... That day, that day was different. It was a very big forest and I had explored most of it, well what I thought was most of it. Well anyway, we wandered through the woods, just talking, not really paying any attention to where we were headed, not that we cared. But as we wandered, we thought we could see something through the thick forest trees, we couldn't quite make out what it was but it was something that caught our attention. We traveled further to see what it was. As we got closer we could make out what seemed to be just an old rusty shack. We tried looking in the windows but they were boarded up, which reinforced the thought that it was just some old building abandoned years ago. We didn't think much of it seeing as how we lived in a place that had many old buildings and houses that were left many years ago and has been grown over by the forest. It was getting pretty late and we decided to head back to the house, not thinking much of the little shack we had just discovered. I mean, it looked like it had not been touched for many years and we could always come back some other time, so we headed back. Maybe three or four days later, I had my cousin over again, and we had nothing to do so we decided to go back and maybe get into the shack... We got back to the shack and tried to open the door, but it wouldn't open, probably boarded up from the inside. I tried to push it open, but it still wouldn't open. I walked over to examine the window. When I heard a loud cracking sound, it startled me. "Got it," my cousin said with a grin on his face. We walked into the shack to find nothing, just a dirt floor with some old bottles scattered around. I stumbled around in the dark room for a couple of minutes to find nothing. But suddenly, my cousin found what looked to be a sheet of metal, it looked like the same metal that the walls were made of. It was lying in the corner of the room. I walked over to look at it. "Maybe a piece of the wall that had not been put up yet," I said to my cousin. He replied, "M-maybe there's something underneath it." I slowly lifted the sheet of metal to find a staircase... It was so, so dark. And I did not think to bring a flashlight. My cousin had his iPod with him, though it was nearly dead so we kept it on the lowest brightness setting. He handed me the iPod as I began to step into the darkness. My cousin just looked at me with a blank face. I could tell he was a bit scared, as was I. But I continued into the darkness, reaching the end of the short staircase I motioned for him to follow. After the staircase there was just a long hallway. We followed the hallway, shining the iPod down it. I could barely see in front of me, but it was better than nothing. We reached the end of the hallway and walked into a room. We began to look around the room when I stumbled into a table. On the table I found a picture... The picture was me when I was little, swinging on a little swing that I had tied up to a tree in the back yard. My face went blank. I was beginning to get an uneasy feeling, almost like I was going to vomit. My cousin walked over to see why I had stopped fumbling around in the dark. He asked me what was wrong, I simply handed him the iPod and pointed at the picture on the table. He shined the light at the picture. "Is that-" Before he could finish I responded, "Yes." I backed away from the table, as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I could see that this room was not old and rusty like the part upstairs. No, this room had concrete walls, and there was no dust on the floor or table. It was like someone was living here, my eyes adjusted enough to make out a bed... After that, I... I went silent for a while. My cousin, still fumbling around the room, found something else... What he found was another picture of me, only a more recent photo. It was me down by the edge of the woods, I looked like I was about 10, I then looked over to my cousin to see him examining another photo... This time the photo was of me when I was about 13 when I was again, down by the edge of the woods. But this next part... This is far worse than all the other things... I found a picture of me and my cousin. It was... It was just the other day, when we first discovered the shack. "Whatever was watching me is still around," I said to my cousin in a very quiet voice, barely getting the words out. My cousin slowly walked over to me as the light of the iPod shined on the photo... The iPod went dead... We were left alone, in the dark, and something was watching us. We heard the sound of footsteps behind us. Suddenly, a light turned on. Followed by a loud noise, not like any I have ever heard before. The sound of something blunt hitting human flesh and bone. I heard the blood curdling scream of my cousin. After that I got hit by something blunt and was knocked unconscious. I was awoken by the sound of birds chirping. I was laying at the edge of my woods. My cousin was gone. I walked back to the house and got into my bed and passed out, not even wondering where my cousin was. I woke up the next day to a massive headache my mom walked into my room. "I have some bad news," she said to me in a sad voice, almost like she was about to cry. I looked up at her. "Your cousin has gone missing..." Everything slowed down. I looked around my room, remembering what happened that night before. I... I just couldn't imagine him being gone. He was my best friend and he is just gone. Just disappeared from my life. It's all because of me. If I would have just left that stupid shack alone... It has been almost five years since that day. To this day we have not seen my cousin. No one really knew what happened that day. I have never told anyone until today. Today I awoke to the sound of the doorbell. I was home alone. I opened the door to find no one there. I looked around until I looked down... There was a folder. I picked up the folder and brought it inside. I went into my room and sat down at my desk and opened the folder. The folder consisted of pictures of me when I was little. There had been the pictures that I had seen that night. Horrible memories flooded my head. I found a picture of me laying on the floor unconscious in a dark room. Then I looked at the next picture. It was my cousin. My face went pale. He was laying on the ground with a massive wound in the head. There was so much blood... I put my hand over my mouth trying to prevent myself from vomiting. It was then I looked at the next picture... It had today's date on it... It was a picture of my front door. It had the time on it. The time said 9:14, I looked up at the clock I had on my wall. It was 10:00... On the picture there was a note attached to the bottom. The note read: "I'm coming..." I lost it, I went and made sure all the doors were locked. I locked myself in my bedroom. That's when I heard the sound... I forgot to close the window... It was a sound of a photo being taken, from right outside my window... He is in my house now. This will be the last thing I will ever write, so if anyone is reading this take my warning. If you find a shack in your woods. Do not go in it... He is in my room... I must go now... Category:Mental Illness Category:Photography